Voyager Voice: September 2018

What a GREAT day!

We donated $125.00 in apples to the Williston Food Shelf thanks to your generosity. What a great way for students to share food with others.

We appreciate the change to do this kind of service.

Upcoming Events, News and Reminders:

Monday, October 1st: FAP Sponsored Coffee Social in Voyager House from 7:45-8:30. Come and learn about your child’s hopes and dreams! We hope to see you there!

WCS Arrival Time/Procedures: Buses begin arriving at approximately 7:55 am and students can go to their team space at that time. The earliest students may be dropped off is 7:30 am. This year, all 3-8 students will wait in the front lobby from 7:30-7:55 am. Students are expected to sit quietly if they arrive early. Bringing a book, headphones with music or homework are all appropriate activities to engage with while waiting.

Absent Student? Appointment? Change in Bus ride home? Please email tmilks@cvsdvt.org and your core teacher if your student will be absent, needs to be picked up during the day for an appointment, or will ride a different bus home. Core teacher e-mails are:

cobrien@cvsdvt.org
amerrill@cvsdvt.org
jroof@cvsdvt.org
mquatt@cvsdvt.org

CURRICULUM NIGHT - Thursday, October 4th 6:00-6:30 Parent Meeting in auditorium, 6:30-7:30 Team Time, 7:30-8:00 Learning Expo

CANDIDATE FORUM - Friday, October 5th Middle School Candidate Forum at 9:00 am in the auditorium for grades 7/8.

PARENT/TEACHER CONFERENCES - 5/6 Monday Oct. 15th and Friday Oct. 19th. 7/8 Friday Oct. 19th and Friday Oct. 26th. No school on the 19th. Invitations for time slots will be provided to you soon.

Please do not bring in food to share. We have many food restrictions on house. Thanks!

AFTER SCHOOL CLUB: Voyager House offers an after-school program to all 5-8 grade Voyager students who would like a smaller, quieter setting for work completion. We accept any student who is motivated to be there and willing to work independently and who is open to support. We may also recommend this opportunity to students who are in need of work completion or who consistently fail to complete assigned work. It has been a great program for students and we are happy to have the staffing and funding to offer it again this year. Ms. Kim and Ms. Allison, our two house paras, will be the contact adults for this group.

Every Tuesday and Wednesday right after dismissal.
Occasionally cancelled due to staffing. We will let you know as far in advance as we know!
A late bus is available for transportation home.
Membership is through interest and motivation as well as strong recommendations from teachers.

Academic Summaries

Math 8

The 8th graders finished up their Wasting Water Linear Model project this week with a gallery walk and discussion about how we created our Line of Best Fit and how we used this to extrapolate how much water could be wasted from a leaky faucet over weeks, months and years. We looked at actual volume and the cost for the water loss.

We finished the week by looking at a system of equations for two phone plans and figured out which plan would be better for the type of usage. We reviewed the distributive property and solved multi-step algebraic equations.

Math 7

This week we made a breakthrough with modeling addition and subtraction of positive and negative integers. A great question to ask your students is....”What are zero pairs and when do you use them?” If you happen to have a red and black pencil, let your child show you their thinking. Next week we will move on to multiplying and dividing positive and negative integers.

Science 7th/ 8th

This week we left our ramps and carts behind to investigate Newton’s Laws using on-line experiments. This allowed for a frictionless environment. We focused on the relationship between force and acceleration and mass and acceleration when applying a force to an object. Students took data, wrote claims based on their evidence and looked closely at the mathematical relationships of the independent and dependent variables.

This is a graph of force applied to an object with a fixed mass and its acceleration. Students were able to see that it was a linear relationship.

This is a graph of changing mass of the object with a constant force applied and the acceleration. This is a non-linear function called an inverse variation.

Both of these graphs showed how Force = mass * acceleration and Force / mass= acceleration. Students passed in the lab write-ups to be assessed.

Mr. Roof 7&8 Humanities

This week, students were focused on figuring out how an author is intentional about using words to influence how the reader feels. This sets the tone of the writing, and the skill is known as word choice. We practiced this in class, and students have links and the reading log to practice with on their own. We also worked on finding evidence in reading when we read about the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The article we read was written prior to this week's events, so we did not delve into that. We discussed the Supreme Court's role in our government. We also finished up some of our presentations from last week regarding candidates for major offices up for reelection in November and their stances on issues. Additionally, we completed a short writing assessment, IXL skills, and CNN 10 from September 24. Have an excellent weekend!

Mr. Merrill ⅚ Humanities

We wrapped up our first literature group this week. Students will be evaluated on their participation based on collaborating productively with respect, care, and curiosity. Students will write a LEAF paragraph next week related to the them of the books, social justice. We continued our exploration of government, learning about different forms of governments and leadership around the world. We also learned what it means to be a citizen. We completed a chart that identifies all of the rights and responsibilities citizens have, in a variety of settings. Our candidate forum posters are looking great and will be ready for the forum next week. The Republican and Democratic candidates running for US Senate, US House of Representatives, Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General have all confirmed and will be attending our forum.

Ms. O’Brien’s Classes:

⅚ Science: We had a great week investigating plants! Students have been working on scientific drawings and our subject this week was flowers. Students did a short 8 minute scientific drawing of a flower from samples from my garden. It has been so fun to see students taking a quiet moment to be a scientific observer in this way. We also launched our understanding of photosynthesis, a process that plants undergo in order to make food for themselves, with an experiment to test whether changing the intensity of light a plant receives would affect respirations rates. We had some good data and some not so glamorous. Our discussion Monday will be about reasons why we get the data we get and that sometimes no data is still data. It’s a good lesson to have in class, to see that sometimes things don’t go as planned. We will try another experiment to test ideas of photosynthesis again! We will dive into leaves next week to understand photosynthesis more!

Math 5: We made some incredible progress this week on classroom culture! We have been working on setting intentions at the beginning of class to help us focus on individual behaviors that might lead to rich group learning. The group is still creating good habits, as to be expected in a new learning community, and it is always important to know our strengths and challenges as individuals. We made so much growth in this area this week, that the math connections students made were incredible. We built rectangular prism buildings and talked about finding the total number of square unit office buildings in the prism. We discussed how you can find the number of offices in the building by first looking at the first floor, or the area of the base of the prism. And then take that number and multiply it by the number of stories in the building. We wrote expressions to match different building dimensions and students made deep connections to properties of multiplication, all while building understanding of volume principles. We are also steadily building a deep bank of multiplication strategies that help improve our mental math! I can see that kiddos are feel good about the ideas they present to their peers.

Math 6: I am so glad I give exit tasks after instruction! Twice this week, at the end of math instruction, I gave students a task to complete. These exit tasks are usually short and to the point! One was around whole number multiplication and division, and the other around unit rates. Both times, the instruction I gave was not enough and so after scoring the tasks, I was able to readjust instruction. The idea of formative assessment in education is not a new one, but an incredibly effective strategy for measuring effectiveness of instruction. Thanks goodness I saw this early in the unit, as it helps me to make the instructional moves necessary to build proficiency. Unit rate was a big aha, as we looked at problems that had an initial rate presented, like 8 apples for $10, in which students would then have to find the number of apples you could buy for $13. Find unit rate first, then scale up the ratio! I’m always fascinated at just how powerful group learning can be! We had a lot of partner opportunity this week and I can see the wheels turning in brains when they share and teach each other. I also feel like it is important to say that I have seen big improvements for many with effort on homework. Thanks for the help you have provided at home.